Smart Home Blog

Sony announced a three new remote controls for Japanese market - RM-PZ1FD, RM-PZ1SD and RM-PZ1D. The raisin of those gadgets is their simplicity. You didn’t find there LCD display even monochrome! The remotes have three infrared LEDs for a wider angle of coverage. The RM-PZ1FD is designed to handle by two hands (is has square shapes). The rest look like ordinary remotes. All three are waterproof. So, you can use them in the pool or jacuzzi without fear beak them.

The new Sony’s remote controls are compatible with 15 different brands such as Matsushita, JVC, Sharp, Toshiba, Sony etc. They available in Japan at $21.50.

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Sony launched VAIO TP1. That Living Room PC is stylish and features 1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 300GB 7,200RPM SATA hard drive, dual-layer DVD writer, ATSC / NTSC TV tuner, GMA 950 integrated graphics set, and HDMI / DVI / VGA outputs, a 4-pin FireWire connector, audio in / out, four USB 2.0 ports, Memory Stick / SD slots, 802.11b/g. You can own all of this together with Vista Home Premium for $1599.99. IMHO I’d exclude Vista and would try Linux with MythTV

[via Engadget]

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Recently Sony introduced new generation of its whole house hight definition audio/video entertainment systems: NHS-1040, NHS-2040 and NHS-3040. They include following features:

• 7.1 HDMI home theater
• Twelve additional HD video zones (six additional HD video zones for NHS-1040 and NHS-2040)
• Built-in support to add an HD cable or satellite receiver
• An 80 GB music storage and management server
• A 400-disc DVD changer with management system (NHS-2040 and NHS- 3040)
• AM/FM tuner
• XM Satellite Radio(TM) support
• Single-disc Blu-ray disc player
• Three additional auxiliary inputs
• Three zone expansion

Sony promotes the NHS series as “ideal for builders and installers because they reduce time spent on procurement and integrating individual components, and offer the consumer a whole house HD solution with all the features of custom installation without the custom price tag“.

The NHS-3040, NHS-2040 and NHS-1040 will be available in the third quarter of 2007. No any words about the price.

[via HiddenWires]

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Sony showed a new conception of HTPC - VAIO TP1. It’s stylish and power and it’s won’t break design of your living room. TP1 features Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 300GB HDD. It run Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. There are following IN/OUT: an analog cable input, two USB ports, an audio input, a headphone jack, a microphone jack, optical out, Ethernet port, S-Video, HDMI out, and VGA out on the back side of TP1.

No word on pricing and availability yet.

[via Krunker]

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After running Debian on PS3 it’s time to turn it into PVR. Here is a list of its additional components: MythTV and a Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U, a pretty nifty little box that has a TV tuner, a variety of video inputs for handling cable and satellite broadcasts, and support for MPEG-1/2/4 and DivX compression. You’ll also need some Linux drivers for that PX-TV402U, and a couple of patches to help the driver work on the PS3.
Hoverer, I don’t see any practice reason to do this hack. Because if you want to make sure you never miss a recording, you have to keep your MythTV running all the time, meaning you can’t play PS3 games. It’d be much more sensible to create HTPC instead.

[via PVR Wire]

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